Downtown Montreal, highway scenes, Cabot square

I was standing on rue st Antoine looking east, with a view of Highway 136. A gloomy purplish sky loomed over a brilliant green-blue-violet city-scape. Playing the yellow-orange Fall colour trees off the cool surroundings made for an exciting composition. Warm concrete tones complete the look.

Highway city scape, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Same spot looking west, where the sun was nearly hidden behind heavy cloud cover. It was a short moment of sunlight, followed by cool gloom for the rest of the afternoon. Its a neat painting, with an eerie glow. Quinacridone violet (PV55) brings the cool purple tones here, and bismuth vanadate yellow (PY184) supplies the intense yellows. 

Sun overcast highway, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Earlier, at the top of Fort street, I made this painting of cars going into the tunnel. When finished, I walked my bike on the sidewalk down the tunnel, which pops out on st Antoine street at the bottom. There were some good views from inside the tunnel but it was not a very welcoming place to paint. 

Fort tunnel, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Lastly, on my way home I made one last painting of a circle of trees at Cabot square. These large planter areas adorn the park, bringing some nature to the area. I once saw large rats running around the treed areas. This scene would have been good on a larger format paper, I mainly did this painting to remember that it is a good composition. 

Cabot square circle of trees study, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

 

Shaughnessy Village, colours and dépanneurs

Shaughnessy Village is a small neighborhood around the Forum building, it has old fashioned condos painted in bright colours, and several modern condo tower structures. Its been a fight by the locals to preserve the  neighborhood which is under heavy pressure by developers. In the painting, you see a pale yellow facade with the jet-black Forum building in the background which used to be a hockey arena. 

Yellow facade, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Next door, there is a purple-trim facade with greenish-blue shingled roofs. Large blocky stone bricks hold up the structure, creating a baroque architectural effect. I wanted to capture the colours and shapes rather than make an accurate architectural illustration, plus I forgot to wear my glasses for the first bunch of paintings!

Purple and green facade, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Still open for business I think, although closed today, is the Bon Jour dépanneur and its prominent yellow and red sign. Its integrated with the housing block from the previous paintings, you can see a pale green facade with intricate iron railings to the top right. I stood in the same spot and made those three paintings in quick succession, withstanding the strong cold wind barreling down Maisonneuve bike path. 

Bon Jour dépanneur, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

And the defunct Elephant dépanneur with an orange construction sign out front. One assumes this part of the street is slated for re-development, which is too bad it has a lot of character. When condos are put in, they tend to be bland glass and brick boxes pushed right up to the sidewalk so you loose the neighborhood feel. They call that 'in fill' where medium density is bulldozed to make way for high density. Luckily the Shaughnessy community is organized enough to oppose or at least influence what gets done around the neighborhood. 

Elephant dépanneur construction, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026 

Night lights purple grey sky

Its not often a week goes by without any painting, so I went out back and made a quick one of night lights with a purple-grey sky. Of course, the sky mixture is indo blue (PB60) and pyrol orange (PO73), which is an incredible mix for making mauve, taupe, dark orange, purple, dark blue. If you are a watercolour painter I highly recommend the mix, especially for night skies. I first discovered the mix doing a location painting in winter, called Pizza Welat Nocturne, and have used it ever since. Even during the day, its a good mix for cool purple-grey, and with a dab of raw sienna makes for a nice cloud colour. A great example of that is one of my personal all time favorite paintings, Cloud over Tranholme park. Another good mix is indo blue with burnt yellow ochre (PR102) which goes into a more charcoal, dark brown appearance, or burnt yellow ochre plus black (PBk6) which I used in the painting above to make the wall on the left. And the dark tree is perylene green (PBk31) with black. It took me some time to work out the best mixes for night painting, and with the sun going down close to 4PM these days I had better get used to it again!

Night lights purple grey sky, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Green leaf, thoughts on Fall season

I did this impression awhile back, using a leaf and a mix of green paint I pressed onto the paper. Its an elementary school trick, but still loads of fun. Looks like I may have touched up the image in a few places with a brush. Its fitting then, to show a green leaf in the Fall season considering how warm its been. Although the leaves turned yellow, orange and red there were plenty of green leaves and grass around Montreal. Back in the old days, like 20 odd years ago, it was rare to get any quality painting time in the Fall. Here is a scene of a classic car on a Fall day north of Bolton, and one of my favorites of colourful reflections on the Thames river in London Ontario. But those were small windows of time when the sky was blue and leaves coloured. Most of the time, and for years in a row, fall would arrive with cold, wet wind and the leaves would fall off, or the colours would last barely a week with overcast weather. I remember thinking at the time that I would never figure out how to paint in the Fall season with how little time there was to paint. Nowadays, the Fall season goes on and on, at least for painting the colourful leaves! Of course Fall is a fixed time, it ends on November 30 going by meteorological seasons or Dec 21st according to the Solstice . 

Green leaf, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper, 2020

Gas station Little Italy, looking back

Looking back on some of my old paintings, this one was from an interesting time, 2019 leading up to 2020 when the global pandemic hit. Some back story on why I did this painting, it was an idea I got from Hiroshige's series called 'The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō'. Hiroshige was a Japanese illustrator and print designer who was active throughout the middle of the 19th century. During this time, Japan had opened up to tourism, which resulted in Japanese culture reaching Europe in a big way, that was called Japanification. The idea was that Japanese art, music, theater, crafts, poetry and ideas flowed into Europe and even into North America. The Dutch painter Van Gogh came across a collection of Japanese prints which were popular among impressionist painters, Monet had quite a collection too. Van Gogh's plan was to sell them at a profit but he was a lousy business man and ended up copying them and including them in his art. So to make a long and winding story short, I discovered Hiroshige's prints via a book on Van Gogh acquired at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where Cilei and I visited in 2018. And back to the painting, my initial thought was to paint 57 gas stations in Montreal, but it turns out gas stations are pretty boring to paint although I got a few good paintings. Instead, I ended up doing the 68 stations of the Montreal Metro system, a series completed over 2020 to 2021 or so. In fact, I keep painting scenes of the Montreal metro when I get the chance. 

Gas station Little Italy, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2019

Bike path old Cadillac

Thinking I had done enough painting for one weekend I stopped at the Decarie overpass and made a few more. This one shows the Maisonneuve bike path with its warning stanchion dividers, and a low sun creating monochrome tones and glaring highlights. I left part of the road white to increase the glare effect. 

Backlit bike path, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

And an old classic Cadillac by the looks of the emblem, about a boat-length long, parked at the auto shop. It seemed rather difficult to paint this, and I used the two inch round for added challenge. It turned out better than I hoped, the chrome grill is neat. If its still there I can try and drop by and paint it again, although the forecast is for clouds and rain on and off the next while. After a search, it may have been a 1950 series 61 coupe Cadillac, or similar. 

Cadillac study, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

 

Half path to nowhere

Going back to 2020, the city was building a bike path under autoroute 15 in Verdun, direction point st Charles. It was closed all that time although one day the fence was open a bit and I rode in to find a half-finished path to nowhere in particular. Since then, they removed the barriers and its free to ride on, so today I explored it a bit on a cool but blue-sky day. In this scene, I am looking back towards the authroute after passing underneath. 

Half path under autoroute 10, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Vast piles of gravel and earth adorn the landscape, totally deserted. It looks as if they are planning a massive infrastructure, probably a park/recreation area. There is an enormous swath of land here, likely landfill from last century. 

Hills city pylons, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

At the end of the line, the path turns and ends at where autoroute 10 peels off along the river-side. In the background are the elevated train on the left, and part of the Cinema production buildings on the right. It looks as if they are planning to route the autoroute 10 traffic to a new road slightly to the north, in order to open up the rest of the river front. If they succeed, it will eventually hook up with Port Montreal and provide a continuous bike path. 

End of line, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026

Exact same spot looking due south east, and there are massive condo towers over on what must be st Lambert. That is the st Lawrence river at the bottom of the painting. When painting such buildings, I prefer to embellish the colours and patterns using variations of magenta and blue-green. 

Condo towers river, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, November 2026